Broken Dam
by Hawkins437
Summary: Johanna Mason has been through hell and back more times than she cares to count, but even her tenacity has its limitations. And once you've been drowned, how do you learn to trust water again? Post-Mockingjay.
1. Chapter 1

_He highlights the damage done to key infrastructure in various districts, and as he speaks, parts of the map light up, showing images of the destruction. A broken dam in 7. _– Mockingjay

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><p>Sometimes her days are excruciating. Sometimes she has problems simply washing her hands or sits in darkness of her house on end for fear of the electricity's soft, ominous hum, huddling her body of screams when her vision becomes flooded with tides of torture and sparks, or sitting on her porch tying knots in the soft, compliant bark when she remembers the tides swallowed him too.<p>

_Flood... tides... swallow... _her vocabulary is curiously brimming with water these days.

_Brimming..._

Part of her keeps reminding herself that she hasn't had the worst of it, that they reserved that for him. But they still made her unnatural.

_What is it that Katniss called herself? A fire mutt?_

Maybe she is just that, only for different element.

At times, she tries to live a normal life, spends mornings hauling lumber and firewood for her house. Fire, she likes. Fire is safe. It mirrors her temper, her soul. It's the water she fears; water that extinguishes the heat, spreads out like nightmare across her skin, absorbing her, flooding her. And after... the dancing light that curdles her blood.

Sometimes she goes out into the woods and practices throwing axes at trees only to realise that there's no reason to keep it up anymore. She's safe. The Capitol's no more. Snow's no more.

_I am no more._

The words surface in her mind: "_You're totally safe, Johanna..." _The words of the head doctor always make her snort. What did he know about safety, of lack of it? You can't appreciate what you have... until you don't have it.

Like her family.

She remembers how she used to hammer her little sister's braid to the bed post when she didn't want to babysit her. How her older brother used to smack her on the head before he went to the woods every morning and how she always got him in a headlock when he came back in the evening. They, too, were taken away.

And just when she built a surrogate one with the mentors, she was forced into arena to fight them. Killed a few, too. Friendship can only go so far, it seems.

_Cecelia had three kids..._

She remembers how her brother went out. A tree fell on him, supposedly. There were no witnesses to the accident. What with the vast expanses of forest and not one man in sight? If word _weird _ever had meaning, this was it.

More followed then. More _accidents. _Her sister drowning in a river one unfortunate morning. Her father shot by a drunken Peacekeeper. Her mother slitting her wrists...

That one was not an accident but the last line of defence.

Each time she refused to sell herself, more corpses grew ripe for the graveyard. All she loved was soon flushed out.

Then she had only her own life to make a living hell.

* * *

><p>Sometimes they took it out on her tributes.<p>

Too many kids from 7 died under her guidance. In a suspicious bout of wildfire or a landslide, sometimes they made their shelters in crevices that came swarming with vipers at night, others made a meal out of innocent looking treeworms that somehow combusted their stomachs later—that was a particularly gruesome year.

They may pretend not to notice, but all mentors bear the scars.

_Grove_—that was the name of the last girl she mentored. She had gotten six in the training. Only sixteen. Naïve, harmless kid. Not too skilled with an axe. But like others, she was fair game.

_Like me._

"You know, Gale, their faces never really go away." she says. "But it's pathetic to admit it, so you just toughen up and brag about invincibility, pretend not to see them when they creep up on you."

"That's what you do."

"And isn't that preferable to snivelling like a little brat?"

She once sniffled that way, during her games—a mask she wore to fool her enemies. But has she ever stopped wearing masks?

Gale just says, "Think she'll ever forgive me?"

She almost growls. They've been over this a hundred times already, and frankly she's tired of digging up ghosts.

"Think you should stop thinking about her. Let her live. She's got little enough reason to already."

"She's got him." A frown comes with the statement and Johanna feels a scowl tugging at her lips.

"And?" she raises an eyebrow. "You're the one who turned tail, moron."

"Yeah, nice of you to remind me,"

She smirks, "That's what I'm here for."

"Is that the only thing you're here for?"

It's a question she's asked herself often. What is she doing here, in District 2, of all places? The answer is hard to admit without embarrassment. _Escape_ would be a sufficient word, she guesses. She couldn't bear 7 with its ghosts and water.

_Water. _

When she came back to her home district she found it overrun. Flooded. Soil turned into lakes and puddles, trees uprooted—young sequoias and birches and pine. Pine. Her favourite. If she ever had a child, she would've named her Pine. Why _her_, you ask? Because girls are a lot less trouble to hear her speak it. Ironic, considering all the mess she and Katniss have caused over the last few years.

A broken dam. A dam broke during an attack on 7. She doesn't know how it happened or who did it. The rebels blamed it on Capitol and the Capitol blamed it on rebels and so forth, the same old dance, same dull moves.

The first time she saw it, it felt something of a joke. A sick, twisted joke someone like Snow would play on her and she felt the chill and panicked, cried, and it didn't help that the man was already dead to cause any harm. He sank in a pool of his own poison.

It's funny how water has dominated all aspects of her life lately, from simple bathroom issues to her vocabulary and home. If only the memories would wash away so easily...

"Maybe." she retorts, choosing not to reveal her thoughts. "What's it to you?"

"Just curious," he shrugs, not pushing it.

Maybe that's why she likes his company. Obviously he's not too hard to look at, but it's the fact that he knows to shut up when she needs him to is what makes him that much of a valuable companion. Plus he's about the only person she knows in this damn place. It sure beats being alone.

But she's never alone, not really, and that's what terrifies her the most. If she doesn't seek out people, the ghosts will seek her and those you can't flush out with rude comments.

Today, Gale offered her to teach her to fish. At first she threatened to chop him down to a splinter, then to shove her axe helve so far up his ass he'd be shitting timber for weeks and added that he'll be pissing resin, if he ever suggests anything so idiotic ever again, from the kneejerk she'd deliver to his crotch, just for a good measure. Her big brother would've been so proud. Though some of those she actually heard from Blight.

Then, she thought about what his offer meant.

Water is safe, life-sustaining, it provides food and drink. That's what he wanted to show her and that can only be achieved by having no other choice but to depend on it.

And so she found herself here, strolling the woods high in the hills of District 2, following a brisk mountain torrent upstream with Gale Hawthorne as her guide, searching for a place with current wide and shallow enough for them to start.

They set up camp on a clearing under the open sky. Gale prepares the necessary equipment—the weapons, his game bag... he even sets up a tent—the only one they have, but big enough to hold three,—while she gathers firewood and chestnuts to roast over fire.

There's very little Johanna knows as much about—besides killing—as wood. Her brother may have been a lumberjack, but her father was a carpenter as was her sister—her bother lacked the delicate skill for fashioning wood into anything other than a stump. Though a mere apprentice, Johanna remembers just what lustres she could carve before the Capitol's revenge engulfed and consumed her. The ornate chess set she made for their mother's birthday, for one. The thought of her sister brings out a sparingly familiar sense of longing, of emotional drought left in her absence.

_Water... it was water that took her away too._

She re-joins Gale just as he's working away at a thick branch with his knife. He can kill fish with his bow and arrow, but makes a forked spear for her to use. She misses her first catch just barely.

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><p><strong>AN:** _Second chapter coming up soon._  
><span>


	2. Chapter 2

Gale was the first one to climb into the chilly waters of the mountain spring, taking off his boots before he did so, allowing his toes to sink into a mixture of gravel and sand made meek by the current.

"See? It's completely safe." he said.

It's meant to be reassuring, but his words merely set off the memory of 13's head doctor _"You're totally safe..." _address, tinged with lightning-quick flashes of sweat-soiled Peacekeeper uniforms and excruciating tingle of electricity.

For that moment in time, Johanna stands on the bank paralysed. What could a guy hiding in a city of caverns know about safety anyway?

For anyone in Panem, safety is an alien concept—Gale should know better than to say that.

She barely suppresses a snide comment.

She takes his hand when he reaches out, though, and follows him into the stream, unlike him leaving her boots on. For the start, she wishes to have as little contact with the liquid as possible and to his credit, he knows better than to protest.

Her soles send soft splashes rippling across the steady surface of the river and Johanna is mortified when stray droplets worm their way through the chinks and crevices in her worn leather boots, raising her hands to her mouth as if to chew on her fingers. A detail of the stubs adorning her fingers does not escape Gale as he firmly grasps her stiff hand. In the past weeks, Johanna has gnawed through all ten of her nails, including her lower lip.

His free arm coils around her waist as he eases Johanna further away from the bank and into the stream. She doesn't shrug him off once she regains her senses, nor does she try to move away.

The water is cool, she notes, as cool as the morphling that eased her trauma back in District 13, not ice-cold the Capitol has used, not lukewarm like freshwater in the arena. It's clear and smooth across the round rocks, almost soothing... Or perhaps that's merely the result of the comfort of not facing this menace alone, emanating from the closeness of Gale's body.

He hands her the spear and leans forward to guide her hands toward prey swimming by.

"You don't have to baby me," she huffs and he instantly lets go.

And truth is he doesn't, she's watched Finnick do this countless times during his games and the Quell. He made it seem easy and graceful—how hard could be, and could there ever be a better teacher?

But it turns out that despite her reflexes and prowess with an axe and the weeks of training for battle she had to miss out on in the end give her no edge. The moves stretch and strain muscles sparsely before used. She misses the first fish just barely, the second with much wider angle.

Gale, however, nocks an arrow attached to a thin trace and kills the first fish of the day easily.

Weary frustration is quickly replaced by anger once she notices the smug grin crowning his lips and there's nothing to fuel Johanna's killer instincts more effectively than rage in its starkest form. She slashes viciously with her spear, piercing surface in a succession of abrupt moves and soon impales her third fish.

Gale simply chuckles as he removes an arrow from his fifth. Johanna makes it a point to wipe all hints of amusement off his face when the butt of her spear flies out to greet his jaw, but soon after chuckles, too. She's made more progress in one afternoon where entire months of therapy failed her.

In silence, Gale cleans their catch, with her watching his knife work at the scales attentively. She finds her eyes skipping from his fingers to his furrowed brows and the tense line of his mouth as he concentrates and smirks when he doesn't notice her staring.

She finds that she enjoys his particular brand of silence, filled with scraping noises of metal on bones, the shallow hiss his nose makes upon breath, the rustling of his jacket and pants as he shifts seated on the soft moss covering the ground. It blends perfectly with the mild air and chiming leaves, the occasional trill of a songbird. There's no doubt that this is where he belongs—the woods, and the familiarity of their surroundings and smells gives her a sense of home as well, but it's the qualities that are so distinctly his that break the isolation and loneliness of the weeks passed, the terror of her self-induced solitary confinement. Ultimately it is his presence that really grants her the long desired peace.

They make tea of pine needles and roast a few fish over the fire, eating them with baked chestnuts and fresh blueberries.

They tell each other stories and laugh, and avoid thoughts people that would pull them back into their worlds of grief. Drink from a flask of liquor he brought for _emergency purposes, _but even Johanna doubts it was ever honestly meant to be used as disinfectant.

She tells him of her family and he of his, of trouble his brothers used to get up to, of Posy's stubbornness, of his childhood friends and the afternoons they skipped school and led girls onto slag heap to be kissed...

Nobody mentions Katniss. Nobody thinks of Prim.

Right then, right there, they're almost healed with barely visible scars.

Not until the night pulls them under surface.

"You're not coming in?" Johanna asks as she retires into the tent for the night.

"Sure," is all he says.

They scoot close for warmth and don't bother setting up a watch.

_This is not an arena, _Johanna reminds herself. _There's no Careers to rip you apart, even if it's their District._

She closes her eyes with a light head.

Nightmares with children standing on the dam and falling to their deaths invade her sleep, sirens calling them; she's never seen sirens, only heard of them from Finnick's stories, but in her mind they were horrible beasts of foam and lightning that gnawed the skin off her charges with pointed, prodding teeth. Then the dam breaks apart and the roar of water drags her down among the corpses where Snow surfaces, splashing along, with his puffy lips still coated with blood from the feast. A merry, gurgling laughter erupts from his mouth, spraying her with rose-scented blood, and she screams.

The gurgling does not fade when she wakes.

That night neither of them sleeps, though they pretend to for a long while.

He may be wondering if she still wants to carry through her threats and intends to strategically do it in the dead of the night, but the truth is he has ghosts of his own to occupy him till dawn.

"I can hear the river all the way over here." she says at last. The sound reminds her of thousand bath taps running at once, gurgling water and splashing it against ground. Against _her._

He grips her hand and she's not sure whether to comfort her or steady himself instead.

"I saw her," he whispers, face pale and sprinkled with droplets of cold sweat.

He doesn't have to elaborate; she knows exactly who he meant.

She spares no sympathy for him when she speaks, "So you get hunted by a kid in your sleep. Terrific! Multiply the number by a few dozen and join the damn club."

He sits up as speedily as if she had slapped him. She might as well could've, if her tone was any indication. She can see his fists clench and unclench in the dimness of the tent.

"It's not that," he says when silence washes over them. "Everyone gets bad dreams, having seen as much as we did, but... by far the worst nightmare is being awake, knowing that this is reality you can't wake up from. That I'm the one who caused it, that it was my bomb and I know it... _she_ knows it—that's the worst of all."

Johanna thinks back to her Victory Tour, how it was to face the families of the kids that died to put her there on the pedestal across from the elevated platforms of their loved ones, the screens projecting the faces of the dead... The first two districts—Twelve, Eleven—were horrible, as was Nine, but as the days went on she built up certain immunity to pathos, became number as the banquet in the President's mansion drew near. By the end, she merely stood with her shoulders slouched slightly and recited her script in droning monotone, her eyes looking but not seeing. All the districts blurred into something surreal, something so excluding her presence, she could've sworn she's only seen it all on television.

Her voice sounds almost weary by the time she speaks again, "There was a war. People die all the time in wars; they're always someone's children, loved ones..." But then she thinks of what she has lost and what he has yet to loose and finds the boiling point of her temper again. "So stop pitying yourself like you're the first person life screwed over. It's pretty insulting." she finally snaps.

Her words resonate in the relative silence of the night for a moment, echoed only by the insistent creaking of the cicadas, questioned by an occasional howl of an owl.

Then, in a calm voice, almost timid in its quality, he says: "You don't understand, Johanna, Katniss was my best friend."

"And now you'll have to find new friends. Big deal." she rolls her eyes. "People leave all the time, Gale; they don't need their siblings blown up for that to happen."

She's disgusted. She knows she's being too harsh with him, that he's new to this whole _guilt and nightmare _business, but if she despises something more than the shell she's become, then it's whiners and that he needs to learn.

"But Prim was like a sister to me and I'm—" he starts, but she never lets him finish.

"Damnit, Gale, are you so caught up in obsession with a single person that you can't see what you have?"

When he makes no effort to respond, she decides on expanding her argument further: "You have your brothers, your sister, a mother... I have nothing. They took them all and didn't even leave the scraps." Finally, she sits up, looking him hard in the eye, "You have everything to live for. What does Katniss have? And Annie? What do _I_ have?"

"You have me." he suggests.

"For these five minutes, tops." she scoffs, yet can't help but grin slightly.

Somehow they find themselves only inches apart, their bodies tense with anticipation and breath almost non-existent. He's the first one to move forward, closing the distance in between as he presses his lips onto hers lightly and inquisitively, as if only testing her response.

It's her who grabs him by the shoulders and kisses him back with fervour. It's she who climbs onto his lap, effectively pinning him underneath. She's not the one of idle affections; Johanna Mason is the force of nature and Gale Hawthorne seems to be okay with it as their lips collide repeatedly.

"Well, here's hoping that'll last more than five minutes." she mutters in between ragged breaths.

Gale chuckles and rolls over and this time it's she who's been dominated, and Johanna Mason seems to be oddly okay with that.

At the peak of their passion he calls her _Katniss_, but what does she care?

She's nothing but a broken dam.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** _For all intents and purposes this story is finished, but I may continue it if I have inspiration or if there is interest in continuation._

_I'd also like to thank _**Dauntless Tribute** _for her __review. I appreciate the support.__  
><em>


	3. Chapter 3

Dawn rolls over and they have barely slept.

Their bodies united to fight off the midnight ghosts, but does the hour of ghosts ever really end? It's their hearts that house them, not the night. The dark merely makes their pale forms visible.

When Johanna rises from the tent, Gale has already stirred the ashes into a steady fire and sits by bare-chested, waiting for his freshly washed shirt to dry.

She gives him a long appreciative look before she speaks.

"Hey, gorgeous," she pipes up casually, as if to cover that she had just spent several seconds more on observing the muscles of his shoulders loosen and clench than to raise any suspicion.

He turns his head slightly to meet her eye, "Hey."

Johanna suspects that this is purely deliberate and the shirt didn't really need washing at all, but she isn't about to complain.

"So what's for breakfast?" she asks, squatting down next to him.

"Leftovers." he shrugs. That moment of negligence is quickly followed by a playful smirk, however, "Need something washed too?"

Her eyebrow rises high above the arc of its socket, "That a way to coerce me into a striptease in the bright of day?"

"Maybe." he admits.

His impish honesty makes her giggle, of all things, "Not a chance, Hawthorne." she says and almost entertains the idea of sticking out her tongue for dramatic effect.

He, however, leans in closer, his nose barely touching hers, "I'll take my chances." as his mouth starts descending to meet hers, though, Johanna pushes him away—gently, not enough to come across as prudish or aggressive, but enough to show her discomfort, enough to provoke a brisk retreat.

"Let's not make this a habit, Gale." she says simply, robbing him of explanation. He simply nods and starts preparing their morning meal.

It's different, she finds, when the sun is sneaking its beams through the needles and leaves of trees around with its pale morning tint swirling the wispy clouds forward. They're no longer two shadows blotting into one another in the greyish night. The daylight makes their closeness more intimate and conscious and that is simply way beyond Johanna's usual comfort zone.

The fact that a certain Mockingjay has interfered on her sex life might also be a contributing factor.

It was her name that he moaned when the lights of day went out. _Katniss, _he said. Not Johanna.

Maybe that name had a better ring to it and might even be all around cooler, but Johanna was hardly amused by the slip up.

At least it had prevented her from bedding with the cadavers for one night, if nothing else.

Gale warms up the rest of the roasted fish over fire and she digs through her pack for supplies she'd brought along. She lays out a small loaf of bread shaped like a leaf and made with coarse acorn meal of 7. It has gone a little stale, so they break it off to bits, toast it and smother it in honey. It tastes just the slightest bit bitter on its own, but the sugary substance enhances it into a treat. They eat the fish and wash it down with water boiled with raspberry leaves, then pop a few fresh berries into their mouths. For a little moment, with her belly warm and full, Johanna feels almost at home.

She lays her head on Gale's bare shoulder and heaves out a sigh of what appears to be content. He makes no move to touch her, worrying, perhaps, that she would refuse his fingers just like she had his lips mere minutes ago. For now, he settles for the song of finches high up in the trees and she seems to do the same.

"So," she finally speaks, straightening herself up. "Was that your first time?"

He's not as dumbstruck as he should be, considering. He merely shrugs at first, then says, "No, not really."

Her arched eyebrow demands details, so hesitantly, he provides them, a hint of blush darkening his olive face, "There was a girl in the Capitol, a few nights after the war had ended. I got drunk and... just needed a way to cope that didn't involve violent tantrums or suicidal tendencies." She nods, knowing her temper required the same at times. He continues: "There wasn't any point trying to save it up for a special someone after..." he trails off before his mind can put the image to the thought. He grimaces, "Never saw her again. Guess I was pretty spectacular."

She laughs at the expense of his self-deprecation, but somehow during his talk her hand snaked its way up to squeeze his shoulder reassuringly.

"So what's her name?" she quips to keep the conversation going.

"Is it really horrible of me to say that I have no idea?" he asks. "I wasn't really into researching her family tree there and then."

She smirks, "Hey, so long as you remember _my _name the next time, it should be fine."

The blush on his tawny skin deepens at that. "Sorry."

A single word. That's all he has to say about last night's incident. She expected no less but even so his response feels rather underwhelming; Gale is a man of few words and even less apologies. Considering the trauma of the last few months, the losses and the stress they'd been going through, she decides not to hold a grudge.

_Old trees are hardest to cut, _she tells herself. _They grow thick and sprout too deep to uproot._

In the end, they all end as tinder or paste to make into paper, but it'll take more than one night of desperation to fell this one.

A silence follows in which finches' song again fills their ears.

Then she asks, "Was there any girl besides Katniss you liked?"

It may sound as prying, but Johanna doesn't care, she's genuinely curious. Gale doesn't seem to mind. It's another distraction, like their little midnight tryst. For him, though, it means a chance to finally open up.

"A few." he says and she's not surprised. He has never struck her as a single woman type of guy the way Peeta had. "Took some of them to the slag heap, stole a few kisses but it largely meant nothing. Just something to brag about." He pauses and his facial muscles convulse in something like anger and grief mingling with guilt and perhaps a pinch of fear, and for a moment she almost regrets the choice of subject. Briefly.

"There was one girl, though. I was kind of a jerk to her." his voice sounds strained and he's visibly struggling to push the words from his throat, searching hard for those shreds of vocabulary that do not conjure up a visual. "She was beautiful and rich and played the piano and loved strawberries. And I hated her guts. Not because she was stuck up, popular and classist mayor's daughter—but because she should've been. You see, Johanna, she was anything but. She was kind, she was quiet and ridiculously overpaid Katniss and I for those strawberries. I insulted her and she returned the burns in witty banter. There was nothing pretentious about her—except that she had a hot shower and full meal to put on the table each evening. That she spent idle hours creating melodies instead of snares to catch game with. There was nothing spoiled or coddled about her—except she lived in a house with a roof that did not leak on rainy days, with a fireplace that never really went cold when weather called for heat. She suffered just like any of us, really, but I needed something to blame—something closer and more tangible than the pampered folks at the Capitol of which I saw only one person per year. You see, I didn't really hate her, but I felt I had to." He laughs with a certain perplexity to his voice when he admits: "The fact her soft blue eyes could see right through me didn't help either."

Johanna is nearly certain she knows who he's talking about—back in Thirteen, Katniss and her used to talk about those they had lost in those rare moments of unguarded sentimentality—still, she wants to be certain when she says, "Madge."

She can see his body tense up at the cluster of sounds, moving a few inches aback as if burnt by a stray flicker of the flame in the front. "Yeah," he says softly. "Suffice to say, I never took that one to the slag heap, but, man, did I want to." After a moment of consideration, he adds, "I never got the chance to say _thanks_ either."

It's the longest Johanna's ever heard him talk, though, of course, she knew him briefly compared to most. But his words rang with honesty she doubts he ever shared with anyone before. Certainly not with Katniss. Even as a friend she was territorial, overprotective and possessive, Johanna suspected that breaching this subject would hardly win Gale any patient friendly advice.

"She died in the bombing, hadn't she?" she asks.

He nods, swallowing hard. And maybe her eyes are playing tricks on her, but she seems to notice that he's shivering. Droplets of cold sweat glisten on his brow and his fists clench in attempt to steady his temper. "I couldn't save her. Her house took the first bomb that they dropped." His nails dig into the calloused flesh of his palm. "She saved my life with the morphling for my back and I couldn't repay her. I wasted time by being a jerk and brooding in the woods!"

With eyes wide, she tries to console him, "Hey, Gale, it's okay." she says. "It's all past now, there's nothing you could do."

But he shrugs her off, "No, Johanna, I could. I could've been honest with myself. I could've stopped my social injustice diatribes just for a second and say something nice, smile maybe. Admit that the only reason I tried so hard to hate her was because there was no way I could ever have her. Me, a guy from the Seam..." he trails off, shocked that he's revealed so much already. He had hoped that saying those things, exposing the chinks in his armour, would lift the invisible burden of guilt off his shoulders, but all he feels is emptiness and nagging voices of thousands that accompany him each day. "That's what bothers me the most, Johanna. Not Prim. She was the last straw, the nail in the coffin, but not the first one I killed. I let her down, Johanna, I let _them _down. I let thousands of people die back in Twelve, then killed hundreds with my own hands and snares, I... I can't go on like this, seeing them grimace at night as flames engulf them, their voices accusing and gloating at me or screaming in agony, crying that it's my fault... I'm not _that _strong, I can't take it... because they're right, I failed them, I became a tool, a murderer... a... a..." he struggles for words, searching for some that would convey his predicament.

"A victor," Johanna finishes. He stares at her as if her speech was impeded beyond recognition or foreign like those who once inhabited the lands long before Panem. "You became a victor." she repeats.

She knows the symptoms, having lived that life for over four years. She knows Gale's despair. He was whipped, she was tortured; they have both killed and revelled in it—up until the conscience took over. They're both broken. They've both been used and their hands are dripping with red that is not their own.

"Yeah," he says, confirming her assessment.

Her hand moves forward to cup his cheek gently; her brown eyes instantly seek his.

"Don't do that." he says and pulls her hand away yet doesn't let go.

"Why?" her shrill voice makes the simple pronoun a command rather than a question.

"Because I'm in pain." he explains. "It doesn't count if I'm in pain."

"As was I yesterday," There's insistence in her voice that won't accept a refusal. In their eyes, wood and grey sky meet and from their lips their taste individual torment and grief, pain and abnegation. Not passion, but desperation of a drowning man clinging onto a thread of life that cuts and burns hands yet barely keeps him alive. That is what they feel when their mouths collide. Sweat and blood and screams, flame and water and little sparks that hum and paralyze.

It's a long kiss.

Her fingers trail the path of scars that zigzag his back. She saw how he got them—it was broadcasted live on the national television, after all. He recoils at the touch as if they still hurt, as if her fingers are made of flaming pain the lash has stirred. He breaks the kiss and stands upright.

"We should go hunting." he says. "If we want to eat tonight,"

He strolls over to the low bush at the edge of their camp where his shirt has been hung out to dry and puts it on at last.

"What time is it?" she asks.

He peeks at the sun, then the position of shadows mirrored on the ground. "Sometime after noon," he guesses. "Let's go."

Johanna grabs her weapons and follows.

* * *

><p><strong>NA: **_I have decided to continue this story when I happen to have time. It should have six to seven chapters in total. Hope you've enjoyed it so far._


	4. Chapter 4

**Warning flag for an implied torture flashback scene.**

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><p>Johanna decides that she doesn't want to fish that day. Though she considers yesterday's activities a small victory in their own right, that doesn't mean she trusts water any more. What little contact she makes with it today is to rid her face of grime and fill her bottle before her and Gale venture deeper on into the forest to hunt for game. Not less and certainly not more.<p>

He lends her a spare set of bow and arrows and instructs her on the use. He's hardly as good a shot as Katniss is, but he thinks he makes for a passable teacher. He has Johanna try to shoot cones off the branches of pine trees and chuckles at her frustration when she fails to hit at all or when the arrows get stuck in wood instead, or when cones fail to fall down. When that happens, he climbs the wide low boughs of the tree and recovers them and has her try again. Her aim improves slightly but they still lose a couple of arrows—either they fly off into the great unknown or snap in half due to her marksmanship clumsiness. He shrugs it off, saying that he can always make more of them later.

What he doesn't need to teach her is how to move silently once the real hunt begins. Her feet tread soundlessly as if her body was one with the earth, merely an extension of the moss and soil underfoot. She is like a dryad, he realises, a creature from stories that she has told him about yesterday around the fire. They're like the souls of the trees, the guardians of the forest that superstitious people of 7 hold in awe. He had thought that she would not be the type, but hearing her speak of them with such childlike ferocity, Gale was convinced that the remnants of the little girl inside her might believe in them.

For a moment, it almost feels like Katniss is by his side, but he quickly banishes the thought. The eyes of the girl beside him are wooden brown and her hair short, her body leaner and taller than Katniss has ever been, and he finds he rather likes Johanna's company.

He spots the first squirrel and points it out to her, but when she tries to shoot it, the arrow barely brushes against its tail. She hisses and almost sends the bow smashing against the tree, but thinks better of it in time.

"We'll go hungry if you keep waiting on my aim to improve."

He nods, barely suppressing his amusement.

So he teaches her how to tie a twitch up snare instead and allows her to find a suitable game trail. He shoots down a curious pigeon peeping at them from its hideout in the beech leaves. He decides to make a small fire and roast it there and then as they've still got a lot of daylight left before they'd have to retreat for their camp. Johanna climbs the beech tree and discovers the pigeon had been warming a number of eggs. They suck them raw and chew on sorrel leaves that they've discovered nearby, while the bird roasts.

"So," she speaks up after a while. "Madge, huh?"

"She was like sunshine," he says. He pretends to gulp down some water so that he doesn't have to elaborate.

Johanna realises that Katniss is by far not the girl whose loss Gale needs to get over.

"So what about you? By now you know all my dark secrets and I hardly know anything about you except that you sometimes kill people and can be pretty rude." It was his time to ask questions now.

"You got that part down pat." she smirks, but that fades when it's time for her share of honesty. "What'd you wanna know?"

He grins, "Tell me about your love life."

Her tone hints at inner venom and she crosses her arms on her chest. "What's there to talk about? I don't really get attached to people like that."

"I never told that to anyone before, you know." he stresses in attempt to convince her to open up.

"Then maybe I should open a practice—Johanna Mason, M.D., therapist." The joke rings hollow when her voice is clanging with annoyance.

He grips her hand and squeezes gently. She tries to resists but finally sighs, "Okay, fine." She takes a deep breath before beginning her own story. "My first kiss was with a girl—and a fair few after that."

He quirks his eyebrow quizzically.

"Oh don't act like that's a big secret, everyone knows that."

_Not everyone, _he thinks. He honestly didn't, but he doesn't interfere with her tale.

"So that's that. And then I also had a crush on Finnick Odair for a few years after he'd won his games, believe it or not." Her hands dart up to her mouth, but not for the reason Gale might believe. _I've said his name... _she thinks to herself. The name renews her pain. And though her dark eyes are widened and she is visibly shaken, she continues in a seemingly even tone that would fool no one despite her efforts. "When I finally met him after my games, I immediately knew that he could never be anything else than a friend to me. A sibling almost," _Another dangerous word,_ she notes. "He's just so... not what'd you think he is from the television." She presses her eyelids together, "Was." she corrects herself.

Gale nods. "I got to know him, a bit, when we were in the Capitol. He seemed like a good guy."

"The best." she mutters.

He notices her swallow uncomfortably and attempts to divert subject. "So you're—"

"Incredibly warm and welcoming? Yes." she quips with a small smirk, not caring to wait for what he was going to ask.

"Something like that." he chuckles. "Anyone special to you?"

She shakes her head, "No, not really. I hardly ever thought of it before the Games and after... well, I had other things to worry about." Mentoring, waking up screaming from the terrors of the night, threats and her family's deaths. She mentions none of that, however, she's not ready to confine in Gale like that. Perhaps she never will. "Never went much further beyond one night stands."

He doesn't know what to say. He feels no pity, merely understanding. Wasn't he ultimately the same? But he knows Johanna doesn't care for his sympathy—or anyone else's, so he simply cuts up the pigeon once it's ready and hands her a piece.

"So why aren't you returning to 12?" she says while nibbling at the juicy flesh of the bird.

"You know why." he mutters.

She nods. His logic isn't really hard to follow.

With a sigh, he continues, "My family went back there when I got the job here. I feel like I should visit, but I wouldn't even know how to begin to say hello. Or look them in the eye." He steadies himself by drawing a shallow breath. "I mean, I did what I had to... doesn't make it any less horrible in the hindsight, though."

Just who the pronoun _them _includes remains unsaid—a mystery to both him and her, dangling in the air like on a silver thread of spider's web.

Johanna doesn't say so, but thinks him a coward for refusing to confront his shame face on. Yet when she realises how she refuses to shower on the best days and can't turn the tap on the worst of them, how Katniss had to force her into the rain at training in 13, how without Gale she wouldn't set a foot—or even a tiptoe—into that river, how a puddle-worth of water turned her into a cowering fool on the Block, and suddenly it's her who feels pathetic.

She steels herself by wiping her greasy hands on the fabric of her pants and then crossing them on her chest while scowling. It doesn't work. The gesture has always given her an edge, an air of attitude—but never protection, never peace. Today is no different.

The world around her starts shimmering and the soft hum of wind changes into crackling of the sparks on wire...

"And you?" he asks. "Why'd you leave 7?"

She's so caught up in her inner world of hypnotising buzz and gush of water that she almost doesn't notice he's spoken.

"Too many ghosts," she says at first, but then adds: "Too much time, too. Is it weird that with no Snow, no Games, I just... don't know what to do with myself?"

He smirks, "Admit it, Jo, you never did."

"So it's _Jo _now? All right, I can take it," she chuckles, relieved by the change of subject—and more importantly, the mood. "What else you got?"

His smirk widens into a toothy grin when he says, "You're really pretty, you know."

No doubt he meant it as a compliment, but somehow the comment rubs Johanna the wrong way. Of all the idle observations he could have made, Gale Hawthorne just had to choose the one most superficial of them all. She never cared for her looks—not when her hair fell out from torture, not when her face got marred by chicken pox in childhood, not when scars split the bridge of her nose, chin and cheek during the Games, not when the Capitol erased all her flaws with cosmetics. It was a stylist's job to care about visage, not hers. Reducing Johanna to a piece of aesthetics was an insult. And insults made her blood boil.

She channels all her animosity and anger into an abrupt: "Save it."

Gale, on the other hand, feels puzzled. "What'd I do?" he stupidly asks, not understanding her outburst. He falls silent when a scowl and glare are his answer.

They eat the rest of the bird in silence, accompanied only by the occasional smack as they suck on the bones, a trill of birds overhead, and the mechanical clicking of the insect hidden in the greenery. Johanna tries hard to block out the sinister sound as she licks her fingers clean and wipes them on her trousers for a good measure.

"You should probably get some food." she says then, finally breaking the silence that has lain heavily between them, her tone sardonic. "I'll go and pick something, I'm good at that." She sets out immediately, not waiting for his acknowledgement.

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><p>Once out of sight, she hurls her axe at the nearby tree.<p>

"_Pretty!_" she scoffs. "What an _idiot!_"

It was all Johanna could do not to put the axe in his face instead, or her fist if nothing else. But she is working towards the set goal of controlling her emotions better, as her doctor had advised—the only piece of advice that has not gone completely over her head.

With equal verve as before, she pulls the axe out of the tree and secures it on her belt.

_Breathe in. Breathe out. _she reminds herself and follows the simple instructions until her heart is beating steadily.

Another word for Gale's action springs to mind—_brainless. _A soft smirk plays on her lips at the memory. However much she'd like to deny it, Johanna misses her—the taunting and the late night chats, the silent understanding of each other they had... Maybe she should consider visiting Twelve after her weekend in Two is through. It's not like she has any tasks to occupy her time and mind.

Except for the one at hand...

Having grown up in the woods, Johanna knows all there is to know about its resources, much like Katniss and Gale do. She knows the edible mushrooms and poisonous berries, several herbal remedies and plants to dry up for spice, she knows trees and which bark makes for an unusual treat and which seeds to pick. She finds a group of young boletuses and blusher amanitas anticipating the mushroom season, picks clean a patch of cranberries and strips bare the nearby raspberry bush, even collects the fallen chestnuts hiding in the grass and plucks clusters of hazelnuts from trees to crack open by the fire. The forest is full of riches to be discovered in this late stage of summer, and there are only a few that Johanna doesn't know.

But they're also full of danger lurking around and overhead.

She stuffs the supplies into her backpack next to a can of dried beef, second loaf of acorn bread and a jar of honey. She is just about to head back to the camp when the first droplet falls on top of her head. Immediately, she grasps the short hair that has just recently grown back in and another dozen lands on her shoulders and temple, one sliding down her forehead to melt in her brow. She panics and crashes against the tree behind her; her breath is coming out in ragged wisps and she is unable to find a voice to scream, instead, she clutches her knees with shaky hands, the shiver briskly making its way across her body, jumping from nerve to nerve like electricity. Light pierces the sky above her and illuminates the forest with beams of radiance through the leaves. Her pupils dilate and a muffled cry that escapes her throat is absorbed by the roar of thunder. Whiteness of a Peacekeeper uniform engulfs her sight, a voice of the wind whispering: "Happy morning, Miss Mason." Desperately, she tries clamping her hands over her ears in attempt to stifle the memory, but another bolt of lightning combs through the clouds, followed by an outcry of opposite charges meeting.

Of course, having grown up in 7, she knows all about how one shouldn't dawdle under a tree during a thunderstorm, but she has no strength to prop herself up. The lightning has her mesmerized and the water drops lapping against her skin paralyze the rest. The familiar tingle returns and her muscles begin to twitch with frantic automatism. Briefly, the rain turns to blood in front of her eyes—before a voice calls out her name and the flash of lightning returns her to the dank, tiled room in the Capitol.

Over the hum of the device entrapping her, she can make out a boy's scream coming from the adjoining room. _Peeta. _The Peacekeeper speaks at her, but his words blend into an endless string of guttural growls and throaty laughs that send jolts of pain through her dampened skin—whether with water or sweat matters not. She is cold; she is alone but for the alternating laughs and shrieks that are soon joined by her own. With another jolt of current, they're muffled into a whimper.

She feels pathetic.

A roar shakes her body and she cannot tell whether it is another thunder or shooting of a gun. She can feel the copper taste of blood in her mouth, though—hers, or someone else's? Who knows... her consciousness is wavering.

Then someone is shaking her shoulders, gently, saying her name for about a dozen times.

"Johanna? Johanna, can you hear me?"

She squints, trying to bring the blur of shadows into smudges of colour, then to focus them into solid shapes.

"I know you," she mutters. "Gale Hawthorne. From TV."

The soldier scoops her carefully into his arms.

"Yes, you do, we're friends." he says.

"Friends..." That doesn't make any sense. She doesn't know him. Not personally. He's Katniss's cousin—_fake cousin_, to be exact. They never met.

"Hang on tight, Johanna." he tells her and she circles his neck with her arms. Her head bobs back and forth as he runs and through the haze of memories, as the cold water soaking her brow stirs her mind into action, she realises that he isn't wearing the dark grey uniform of District 13 and that the strips of light they're passing aren't fluorescent tubes of the Capitol's underground facilities but gaps between trees surrounding them, and for the first time, she remembers that it was Gale who has rescued her from the confinement of her prison cell and carried her to safety, much like he does now when they finally reach their camp and she is lain down into the dry warmth of the tent.

He takes off her wet clothes and wraps her in his jacket, fills bottles with boiling water to warm up her sleeping bag and pulls it over her bare legs and up, almost to the tip of her nose; lastly, he presses her to his chest to give her as much heat as possible. She struggles against his efforts as if he were just another Capitol lackey, but he cradles her like a fragile doll and whispers of safety.

"It's okay, they're gone; the Capitol's gone, they're not going to take you again. I won't let them." Slowly she eases into the illusion and his embrace. "We're safe, they can't get us now."

She sneers to herself. Lies. So many lies. If only she could believe them.

They will always hunt her, even as ghosts—and those are much harder to destroy.

"The water..." she mutters.

"The water can't get in here, I promise. You're safe." he repeats.

Tears flood her vision and her lips are quivering, "Here I am, snivelling like a little brat." she groans weakly.

"It's okay," he murmurs and presses a kiss into her hair. "No cameras around here and my lips are sealed." he jests.

Instead of smiling, she can't help but scorn the intimacy forming between them. "I told you not to do that."

"I can go away, if you like." he offers, drawing away a bit.

"No," she turns and looks into his eyes—grey as the skies outside, but unlike them non-threatening, offering to be her safe haven. "Stay." she orders because Johanna Mason never begs, not even when desperate. There is but a single ultimatum to be had: "Just no more kisses."

He nods and his arms envelop her as a python snake. Exhausted, she briefly contemplates whether the heat his body emanates could possibly be comfort, but isn't sure if she is capable to discern such feelings and their consequences, as it were, even with her head clear and bright. For now, she allows herself to lose herself in the lie—the imaginary safety of his arms. She'll allow herself that false thought. For now.

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><p><strong>AN: **_A big thank you to _**LivLuvHG7273** _for being the first one to follow the story. You rock! Hopefully more followers/reviewers are to come._


	5. Chapter 5

**I'm sorry for the delayed update, but school and personal life have been going a little bit hectic. Hopefully the chapter compensates for the wait. I also thank everyone who faved and followed and reviewed while I was busy.**

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><p>When she wakes several hours later, Gale is skinning a big, fat squirrel for dinner.<p>

"Hi, gorgeous." she whispers.

"Hey," he says and cuts up the animal into a bunch of bite-sized cubes. "Have a good sleep?"

"No." she says bluntly and even had she lied, he wouldn't believe her. Few people go thrashing about in a peaceful slumber. In her dreams, she was floating atop the foamy sea water until the rains came and the droplets' icy sting dragged her underneath where the schools of neon-coloured fish tore her flesh to pieces to eat.

She shifts up and sees that the kettle over the fire has been filled with rainwater cleaned with a few drops of iodine and set boiling. She catches scent of juniper and other spices she has gathered in the woods before, notices a plate of cleaned mushrooms and a pot of cranberry mush.

She cocks her eyebrow, asking, "Making stew?"

"Yep," he nods, throwing chunks of meat in the kettle for simmering.

Johanna finds a pouch of raspberries she picked before the storm came and pops a few in her mouth to stop her stomach from rumbling too audibly. The bird they shared in the woods was way too small in size to fill her for long and her body requires more.

"How long was I out?" she asks whilst chewing. Johanna Mason has no time for proprieties such as swallowing a bite before engaging in a conversation.

The light's grown dimmer outside the camp, but it's not yet time for sundown, she thinks.

"About two and a half hours, maybe more." he answers, adding some more ingredients in the pot.

It's her turn to nod.

Gravely silence engulfs them both, interrupted only by the low crackling of fire and the bubbling stew. Johanna thinks back to her youth in District 7 and remembers how uncommon it was for a man to make his own dinner. She recalls the bearded face of her father coming home from work and the smell of her mother's chestnut soup to which, if they were lucky, she sometimes added bits of seared bacon. Her father would dunk bits of coarse grain bread in it to soften the crumb as they were rarely able to afford the sweet bakery bread. Not many men in 7 could cook as the stove was ever thought of as a woman's domain—a position which, later in her adolescence, Johanna firmly opposed as she did nearly anything and everything.

When not cooking or doing chores, her mother would sit in a creaky old rocker and sing old ballads of magical forests and the creatures that lived within. She would swing back and forth in her chair and tell stories of spellbound woods and knights—the first time Johanna had ever heard that word—that would come hacking and sawing through the thick underbrush with their swords and save the princess trapped in a tangle of thorns where the evil witch bound her. Johanna would imagine living in one such tale, although it would be her, not the knight, saving damsels and noblemen from the captivity. All the while, her mother would be weaving ropes from tree bast or baskets from wicker twigs.

Their house would always smell like candlewax and wood and on winter nights, she and her sister would huddle in a bear skin in front of the fireplace and dream. Silly things, mostly, she recollects, and she would oft laugh at her little sister's ideas and call her an idiot,—but what wouldn't she give to get these moments back once her sister was gone. What wouldn't she give for her mother's song and her father's burly laugh and even her brother's teasing for which he'd earn bits of chopped up firewood hurled at his face. Johanna has ever had a particularly dangerous aim with wood and axes alike.

"I'm sorry." Gale says out of the blue, ripping her out of her bitter nostalgia.

"What for?"

"Being an ass," he shrugs. "Belittling your problems and focusing on mine. Doesn't matter that you didn't bring them up, because... compared to what you're going through? I'll take the nightmares any day."

Somehow the form of his apology provokes a minor spit of venom from her. "Don't make a fragile doll, either; I hate that, too."

"You're a hard woman to please." he notes.

"Like you'd know a whole lot about pleasing women anyway, Mr Almost-Virgin." she retorts.

"Point." he admits.

"What? No more angst?"

"That's hardly appropriate, I admitted being a jerk."

"I'm Johanna Mason, it's practically my job to make distasteful comments." she smirks weakly, still weary from her storm episode.

"Noted," he chuckles.

No words were shared for a while, the only sound piercing the quiet being the rustling of leaves and the bubbling of stew boiling over fire. In spite of Gale's honest efforts at cooking, it would be Johanna to give the stew much desired flavour, all the while chewing on the soft, sweet bark she'd scraped from the young twigs before the storm overtook her.

It was hot and filled their veins with heat as they gorged themselves it later, eating it with roasted chestnuts and dipping toasted bits of District 7's acorn bread into the stew. To Johanna, it tasted of home, to Gale it tasted of new beginnings. It was an honest meal of the fruits the woods offered, spicy and full, a simple dish made of resources at hand that no longer recalled the scarcity under Capitol's rule.

He hasn't had a meal that good in weeks. District 2's military canteen offers little to compare.

"You know I never got to thank you?" Johanna says. "For dragging me out of Capitol, I mean. So ... thanks, I guess. Better now than never, right?"

"Don't mention it," he shrugs, focused on chewing up the mushrooms in the stew. "I did what any soldier would. It was my duty."

"Yeah," she nods and pops a cranberry into her mouth. "But it wasn't me you came to rescue. It was Peeta. Without him there, I'd still be rotting in that cell. Electrocuted. Coin wouldn't risk Plutarch's contacts for a psycho from the Lumber District, so I wanted to let you know that I'm thankful, for putting your ass on the line to get me out of there, important to the cause or not."

He accepts her thanks silently, along with a spoonful of the food, creasing his brows as if contemplating.

"You were so cold that day. Like there was so little left in you to resist."

"Hey, even if I died that day you pulled me out of there, I would've died free. That's what matters to me, none of this sentimental bullshit." She rolls her eyes. He doesn't get it, no one who hasn't endured capture ever will. "Still, I'm grateful."

"For what it's worth, I'm grateful, too." he says.

"That so? What for?" she cocks her eyebrow in curiosity.

"That we got you out. That you _mattered. _We wouldn't be having this wonderful conversation otherwise." He stressed _wonderful _in a mocking, but not unkind way. After all, her company is what keeps him sane for the moment, prevents him from wallowing in self-pity and recounting his faults and flaws, the losses suffered this last year, all of his kills... And that's how he realises it. It's not a simple need for a hunting partner or a person to talk his problems through. He genuinely likes her. Her comments, the jokes, the way she calls him out on his bullshit without remorse...

Johanna Mason is, he supposes, the closest thing he has after his own family. The notion is scary and intriguing alike.

"Well doesn't _that _warm the heart." she quips, mimicking his own tone and takes care to punctuate the statement with a smile. Oddly accurate remark, considering the direction of his thoughts.

"Ever the warm one, are you, Jo?"

"As I've said yesterday—incredibly so." she nods and smirks playfully. But the playfulness of the moment lasts only for a fleeting second as a thought comes to her mind.

"Have I ever told you how my family died?"

He shakes his head. Of course not—only two people besides her knew, one of which is dead and the other is in a constant alcoholic stupor, so probably as good as dead.

She takes a deep breath and begins a story so few people had the privilege to hear. It's a secret that urges her to confine, to clear up what muddled skies had hung over her and Gale Hawthorne this entire weekend.

"You've heard what Capitol did to its victors, I'm guessing?" she asks. It was a trivial question, really; the entirety of Panem knew of Capitol's machinations now, thanks to Finnick's painful confession. They were a commodity for President Snow, meat to be offered and sold if it dared to resist death in the butchery of the Hunger Games. Johanna resisted the practice and paid the price.

"So it's true, then? All of you were forced to do it?" he asks.

"Not all of us." she shakes her head. "Only those thought attractive—of which Capitol's doctors usually made sure. But yeah, they tried to force me, too."

The words were unbearable on her tongue, bitter and sour at once, so she popped another raspberry in her mouth in hopes that its sweetness would banish the disgust. He remained quiet, allowing her to tell the story at her own pace.

"_Tried _being the keyword." she continues. "I refused, so... I got an ultimatum. As Finnick said, each time you refuse they hurt someone you love—except _hurt _is a terrible understatement when it comes to Snow and his loyal crew of freaks. I refused once—an _accident _followed..."

She finds a piece of branch chopped up for their fire and digs her nails in wood to ease the mental pain, replacing it with the kind that's tangible.

"My brother was the first to go, they claimed a tree fell on him; next... my little sister drowned, my father was _accidentally _shot by a peacekeeper. No one believed the _accidental _part, of course, no one in the Districts is dumb enough to."

Gale remembered a convenient incident involving a few of the Twelve's vocal rebel supporters and a mine collapse. Such accidents happened from time to time—to a strangely specific set of people. Five of the men died in the cave-in, the rest were smart enough not to talk of rebellion ever again—that is until Katniss and the Mellark boy returned from the 74th Hunger Games largely unscathed.

"Finally mother couldn't take it and committed a suicide of her own free will." she continues, clutching the bought ever tighter. "That was when Snow stopped pushing. He had nothing more to use against me, so he let go—just like that, like nothing ever happened. I still blame myself for it... had I relented, let go of my high moral ground..."

"Then you'd be no less traumatised." Gale weighs in.

He can't begin to imagine what the denizens of the Capitol were capable of, what sick practices they inflicted on their sex slaves. Finnick spoke of incest and rape and other detestable things, of private tapes sold for public convenience. He was glad that Johanna went through none of that. He shudders to think that similar could've happened to Katniss were it not for the _Star-Crossed Lovers_ hype.

The thought of Katniss sent a stab of pain through his chest.

He failed her and refused to let the memory go. He swore to protect Prim and in the end he was her undoing. Few things hurt more than betraying the trust of a friend you love.

His mind returns to reality only to find Johanna's eyes swollen with tears. "They'd still be alive." she breathes out, hoarse voice barely a whisper.

"Perhaps." he shrugs. "But would you?"

Johanna ponders the question briefly. There is only so much a person can bear, she supposes, and she could not bear the filth of Capitol's freaks upon the one thing she believed solely to her—yet even so the Capitol found a way to defile it. With spurts of water and electrical tingling.

Her lips form an inaudible _no._ But her fate is a tangle of one-way streets, for had she taken her life, her family would still be punished for that insolence. There is no saving the doomed. The Hunger Games would have their due.

"Thanks for listening," she says at last. "It's useless rambling, maybe, but it means everything to me."

Under the broken mask of invulnerability, he noticed she was shivering.

His own lips curl into a small smile, "Don't mention it. It's about time I paid you back."

"For the hours of angst? Why, I only got a couple of minutes—how unfair." she says, putting on her usual sardonic humour—her sole defence against the world.

"You can always angst my ear off—or, you're welcome to try."

"How generous of you." she chuckles.

"Later, though; it's getting dark." he points out. "Soon, you'll have nothing but that thought to warm you."

"Nothing except for you." she smirks and it's the same weary smirk she'd worn the entire evening. The day's events have taken their toll on both her body and psyche. This would be a restless night, filled with dreams askew and flooded with sea foam and current-charged water. It will not let her forget. But maybe the fatigue will blur memory just enough to become bearable.

The daylight gradually surrenders to the night. The ink fingers of dark reach through the evergreen tresses of the trees at the edge of their camp. The stars are gaping holes of silver thread above their heads.

They store the stew away from the reach of the game and retire for the night.

That night they make no move on each other, no effort at physical consolation with the world, not even a kiss; favouring, instead, each other's warmth as they lay in the tent, side by side, as if meant to do that since forever.

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><p><strong>AN:** _Johanna will be visiting District 12 very soon, so stay tuned for Haymitch and some Everlark. _


End file.
